No 5.1 sound possible with Raspberry Pi 4

[StephanRoemer]

Hey all,

I tried to set up 5.1 sound over HDMI with Batocera 35, but I only get stereo outputs shown in the audio output menu. Using hdmi_force_edid_audio=1 in the config.txt doesn't work. The system does not boot up anymore with that setting. Any ideas how make this work?

[dmanlfc]

@StephanRoemer we are on v36 now. Can you please test? Also where are you expecting 5.1 sound, via Kodi? As we don't actively pursue 5.1 audio with an emulation system. What kind of files / emulator? What kind of surround sound format? DTS, Dolby?

Please also explain your setup. i.e. RPi4 to receiver to TV

[StephanRoemer]

Hey Daniel! Thanks for chiming in.

Yep, updated to 36 in the meanwhile, unfortunately, the issue remains.

I'm not at all expecting 5.1 from emulators! That wouldn't make sense IMO. In Kodi however, I was hoping for 5.1 when playing back video files (Dolby / DTS) or listening to 6 channel WAV files in the audio player.

The Pi4 is connected to my Samsung TV via HDMI and that one passes the audio thru to my Samsung surround receiver via ARC. That means, all audio is directly forwarded to the surround receiver. Using this method for my Xbox and PS3, as well.

The thing I wonder is, should I have choices for surround audio device in these menus here?

[dmanlfc]

@StephanRoemer we currently use PulseAudio after the ALSA was giving us some problems. You should still be able to achieve basic pass-through as per - https://kodi.wiki/view/PulseAudio#PulseAudio_Output_Configuration

However I do note via a quick google a lot of people are struggling to achieve bitstream with the Pi4.

Note: We will be updating to Kodi 20 for v37 of Batocera. You may see an improvement as we can use more audio output options including pipewire support.

[StephanRoemer]

Saw the update today and will see if I can get it working with the pass through! But yeah, the procedure doesn't seem very straight forward.